fightTHERE IS ONLY ONE WAY TO REVERSE STARMER’S “TOUGH CHOICES”!
Chancellor Rachel Reeves, very conveniently found a financial “black hole” in the public finances when she stepped into Jeremy Hunt’s shoes. She said she was “shocked”. So, said Reeves, there was no choice but to make big cuts... And since the “black hole” is due to the Tories’ mess, Labour’s cuts are the Tories’ fault!
Yes, including the “tough choice” to leave the NHS underfunded and in a collapsed state.
Indeed, it seems the report on the broken NHS by Labour peer Lord Darzi, which offers no actual solutions, was published in order to prove that the scale of the problem was too great to fix! “Reform or die” was Starmer’s answer. And for now, apparently, there are no funds available to prevent death!
This, when even the bosses’ favourite Financial Times wrote in its editorial that “given how central health is to all public services, and to boosting growth, fixing the NHS is surely this government’s paramount domestic policy challenge”. Indeed, one would have thought so! But it seems cuts come first.
Protecting the rich
Starmer took the opportunity of the Trades Union Congress annual get-together - which always opens conference season - to address delegates over his government’s “difficult decisions”. He said that he intends to provide the right sort of environment for the bosses, so that they will start to “grow the economy”; also known as “them growing even richer”... And how else but at the expense of the rest of us?
Of course. And beyond that is the general context: the global crisis of the capitalist system, in which all the politicians in power are making similar choices in favour of the capitalists’ greed, by cutting public and social spending, impoverishing their working classes and, some would say, providing political space for the far-right.
Accordingly, Labour’s “toughness” is reserved for use against the marginalised and the poor, who anyway, are no longer considered to be its electorate. After all, abstention was a record high on 4 July election day, as were votes for independents. It’s probably only a matter of time before the “Labour” party changes its name!
Reeves had scarcely put her feet under Number 10’s Cabinet table before the announcement came that pensioners’ fuel allowance of £200-300 a year would be her first target, to recoup (just) £1.3bn for the Treasury! She claims this to be an essential first cut to “stabilize the economy”!
Some Labour backbenchers pointed out that taking money out of the pockets of the elderly wouldn’t be a “good look” for the government, especially since last winter the elderly poor were already choosing between heating and eating. But Starmer and Reeves stuck to their guns - aimed literally at 10m pensioners. They have also refused to abolish the 2-child benefit cap.
But surely that’s anti-labour?
Starmer told TUC conference that he “sees” the problems, but has a “mandate for economic stability” which he refuses to “risk”. Yes, a “mandate” from the less than 20% of the electorate who actually gave him their vote! Nevertheless, ministers are fully committed to using the perverse outcome of the election to force austerity down working class throats at the behest of British business, with whom Starmer now boasts of a “new, positive relationship”.
Union leaders patted Starmer on the back. No surprise there: workers are still paying for the sell-outs these guys signed up to after the 2022 strikes.
Of course, it’s true that Labour could “tax the rich”, as one or two TUC delegates shouted out, during Starmer’s speech. Except he already said he won’t. So the working class has it’s “work” cut out. And this time it can’t leave the organisation of a fightback to union leaders. It will have to start on the shopfloor. ❐
